Theocracy… Israeli-Style

When reality-based issues, like matters of state, are discussed, why are impaired religious people consulted?

The new leader of the ruling Kadima Party, Tzipi Livni, needs to put together a coalition government in order to become prime minister.

One of the parties she had to schedule coalition negotiations with is an ultra-Orthodox Jewish party run by an octogenarian rabbi, Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef.

Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef has describ[ed] the Holocaust as God’s retribution against the reincarnated souls of Jewish sinners. He said Katrina was punishment for godlessness in New Orleans and U.S. support for the Gaza pullout. And he once said that “walking between two women is like walking between two donkeys or between two camels.”

When reality-based issues, like matters of state, are discussed, why are impaired religious people consulted?

The new leader of the ruling Kadima Party, Tzipi Livni, needs to put together a coalition government in order to become prime minister.

One of the parties she had to schedule coalition negotiations with is an ultra-Orthodox Jewish party run by an octogenarian rabbi, Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef.

Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef has describ[ed] the Holocaust as God’s retribution against the reincarnated souls of Jewish sinners. He said Katrina was punishment for godlessness in New Orleans and U.S. support for the Gaza pullout. And he once said that “walking between two women is like walking between two donkeys or between two camels.”

How is this any different than the dog-and-pony performance by our presidential candidates with fairyologist Rick Warren who probably holds similar opinions? The people are responsible to express boredom with superstition to the politicians.

Israeli politics are a mystery even to Israeli politicians. The heart of all the fuckwittery is the system of proportional representation. If a fringe party can get one percent of the vote it’s in. The more insular and extreme a religious clique is, the more its members vote as a single hive organism. That means more seats. More seats means influence. Influence means money. Money means more schools and welfare payments. The money and schools mean more members, more extreme positions and greater insularity.

Secular Israelis, Religious Zionists, Modern Orthodox, Conservative and Reform all hate the system. But to change it they’d have to get a majority. To do that their political parties need the support of wing nuts like Shas. Oops.